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“Smashcraft Heroes”

from matthewzapruder.files.wordpress.com

So there’s this thing called the Prox Hop.

Maybe you’ve seen it. Sometimes the prox is in the front pocket, and sometimes it’s in the back pocket. But it inevitably requires an awkwardly lifted leg, some bump and grind against the wall, or in my case, a running start.

And now, lucky Inkblots, you can hear me do the prox hop!

Last semester, my friend Aku Ammah-Tagoe ’11 interviewed me for a radio piece she was putting together for her audio journalism class with Dan Grech ’99, a Press Club alum and a former reporter for Public Radio’s Marketplace. Specifically, she recorded my running start, jump and the successful beep of an unlocked door. The show the class produced, called Back Story, will be airing on WPRB on Feb. 7 and 14 at noon.

“Princeton students have plenty of inner conflict — there’s no shortage of drama here,” Ammah-Tagoe said. “But also there are great stories [about] people who are doing things that are unexpected, interesting, surprising, and really cool.”

The reporter describes a recent match of Starcraft against Tsinghua University in Beijing. Of course, being Princetonians, one participant felt the need to relate the game to international relations and geopolitics:

Ke Wan, a graduate student from China who is studying operations research, detailed each world’s character traits: Zergs are prolific and fast, Terrans are sophisticated strategists, and individual Protoss units are extremely powerful. Wan drew a geopolitical analogy. “Zerg is like China,” he said. “It depends a lot on its large population. The U.S. is Protoss because it emphasizes the value of the individual. And Terran is Russia or the former Soviet Union, a huge high-tech war machine.” He plays as Terran.

Read the article, reflect upon on what Princeton has become, and shed an emo tear or two for Old Nassau.